Dumping Bloglines
Jennifer Macaulay and Meredith Farkas have both mentioned Bloglines taking a ridiculous amount of time to display new posts from their blogs. I took note of this when they brought it up, but hadn’t noticed any problems myself until the last week or so. Sometimes, Bloglines doesn’t show a new post from davidrothman.net for two days. Two days!
This is just rotten. I keep a Google Reader account and run Abilon on my home desktop computer for testing purposes, and they both updated flawlessly. It isn’t my feed, it’s Bloglines that has the problem.
I’m familiar and comfortable with the Bloglines interface. I like it better than that of any other web-based aggregator. Unfortunately, this seems to be a little like affection for a beautiful car with an engine that sometimes won’t start. Timely updating is as basic to an aggregator as a running engine is to a car. Bloglines is broken, and I’m tired of it.
I’ve switched to Google Reader. If you still use Bloglines, I encourage you to do the same.
To the folks at Bloglines: If you let me know when you fix this problem with your otherwise great service, I’ll be happy to try it again.
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November 20th, 2006 at 1:38 am
I use Safari’s RSS reader for all of my feeds, but still keep my Bloglines account. Safari works well.
November 20th, 2006 at 1:44 am
Hey Michael. I’d love to use a browser-based aggregator, but I use at least three computers every day.
November 20th, 2006 at 5:52 am
David, I REALLY recommend BlogBridge: http://www.blogbridge.com/
It is a (cross platform: Windows, Mac OS X and Linux) feed reader running on your Personal computer BUT …VERY suitable for use on several computers.
Take a look at the Visual Tour (http://www.blogbridge.com/products-services/blogbridge/visual-tour/) or the screencasts.
It comes with a free web service that allows you to keep your subscriptions safely protected on our server.
You can import/export your feed collection via OPML.
It supports Reading Lists (OPML) too.
It is GREAT!
As extra an enormous Feed Library is available (http://www.blogbridge.com/downloads/feed-library/)
P.S. I am not connected to BlogBridge at all
I just like it!
November 20th, 2006 at 5:56 am
Thanks for the tip, Fred!
Marjolein Hoekstra has spoken well of BlogBridge, too. I’ll definitely be checking it out.
Later Edit: Can’t use it. I’m not able to install software on computers at MPOW.
November 20th, 2006 at 6:07 am
Oops.
My advice: Try it out at home and I am sure you will have a try the next day to convice the guys from the IT department they MUST make an exception. …
November 20th, 2006 at 1:30 pm
Bloglines was down this morning for maintenance. Wonder if they were fixing up this problem?
November 21st, 2006 at 5:13 pm
Interestingly, since this past weekend when Bloglines was down repeatedly, all of my posts have shown up within an hour. I have started looking at other readers, since it is very difficult to always determine if there is some serious lag time and just because. Fred, thanks for the BlogBridge recommendation. It has a pretty clean look and feel to it!!! I just can’t get used to Google Reader – but I really want something that allows me to share my feeds on several computers.
April 25th, 2007 at 9:58 am
[...] I’ve mentioned before that I switched from Bloglines as my feed aggregator to Google Reader, but it occurred to me recently that I should’ve provided instructions on how others can do this quickly and easily. Try using the instructions below to import your feeds into Google Reader in just a couple of minutes and take Google Reader for a test drive. [...]